


Intervention

by femme4jack, fractalserpentine, HopeofDawn



Series: Domesticus [5]
Category: Transformers, Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Cussing, Dystopia, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gen, Het, M/M, Nudity, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-29
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-11-17 06:39:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femme4jack/pseuds/femme4jack, https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractalserpentine/pseuds/fractalserpentine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeofDawn/pseuds/HopeofDawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Homo Sapiens domesticus: Intervention </p><p> </p><p>  <i>Wherefore the dominant species has exhibited class five intelligence, and wherefore the species has been justly and legally found to evidence eight of the eleven TradeWind quota for peril of extinction, the consolidated Towers beg permission to intervene for the administration of relief and aid....   Under section 80239 of the Trade with Organic Species Act, said aid will be negotiated with the recognized governing authorities of each region as legal trade, fully and equitably compensating for the dominant species’ intellectual and physical disadvantages.  Each City-State named in the petition will therefore extend the following portion of aid as a charitable contribution....</i></p><p> </p><p>--Excerpts from the abstract of the first petition to the Lord Prime granting Cybertronian protectorate status to the third planet of system 27985.29594.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Content: Dystopian AU, violence, cussing, references previous noncon, explicit consensual sex**

***

In the ruins of a Walgreens somewhere in what had once been central Georgia, Mikaela found Snickers bars and ibuprofen. 

She ate three of the former, and swallowed a handful of the later dry, while watching Epps sort through the clothing he’d found. Protected under entire walls of fallen concrete, most of the stuff looked practically new once the dust was blown away, the clear plastic packaging just starting to yellow. 

“Fabulous,” sighed Epps, scooping another handful of rubble away. “We now have enough fluffy slippers to last us the rest of our lives.” However long that was going to be. 

“Hey, and some nice pants. Gotta admire the bling.” Not too many men could pull off purple parachute pants with gold sparkles -- Epps was clearly one of the few, the proud, the mighty. Kinda too bad, though -- the view before the pants had been a nice one. Epps really did have a fantastic ass. 

“Bite me. Hey, can we get a little light down here?” Epps addressed the latter to the aliens, calling up to their towering shapes, black against the sunset. They’d brought Mikaela and Epps here willingly enough -- once Mikaela had made it clear that she wasn’t going to give them any information while hungry, exhausted, and being clutched like a doll. It was a risky bit of grandstanding on her part to be sure, but it’d paid off. The big mech had carried Epps and Mikaela both here, then peeled away a sheet of this fallen wall, exposing rich pickings even in this bombed out shell of a nameless small town. 

The smaller alien had told them to ‘fuel’ and stay close -- and then the robots had gone back to their arguing, interspersed with long periods of silent staring at eachother. Creepy fuckers. 

The larger of the shadowy mechs moved a little, where it towered over them. It flicked on some kind of a spotlamp, then turned back to its smaller companion.

Epps plucked a plastic bottle from the wreckage and the tattered plastic sack he’d filled with food packets. Most of the bottle’s bright red label had rotted off, but the cap was intact and the brown liquid inside hissed with carbonation. Epps sat down beside Mikaela, took a swig, and passed her the bottle. It was pleasantly chilly from its burial and maybe ten years under crumbled concrete. Mikaela let the bubbles linger on her tongue, rolled them so that they snapped against the roof of her mouth. “So. What are we going to do about them?” she asked, passing the bottle back and accepting one of the foil packets from Epps. Cheezits, mainly powdered, and smelling faintly off. So much for the inviolate power of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. 

“Not sure we got a lot of choices,” Epps said. The next packet contained jerky, brittle with age. But it smelled fine, and nothing was green. He passed her a piece. “We could lay camp here, see if they’re still around in the morning.” His fingers flashed in the gesture for two moving quietly. Under the cover of darkness, two healthy operatives could move a remarkably long way.

Two *healthy* operatives. Mikaela bent her knee a little, felt the tendons click. The pain was not quite as bad, if she stayed still, and at least it had quit swelling. But she wasn’t going anywhere very fast. “Maybe,” she said, repeating his gesture with just one finger.

Epps shook his head in a firm negative, then dug around in his sack. The next foil packet was almost pristine -- a family of hikers strode happily across a cheery yellow landscape. The raisins and chocolate inside were still good, though the peanuts smelled rancid. She wondered why the peanuts in the snickers were still fine, but these were bad. Oxygen? Epps emptied the package into his hand. “With luck, they just want information from us,” he said.

“Yeah, and once we’re useless to them, after all we’ve seen? Dust,” Mikaela said quietly, picking M&Ms from Epps’s palm. She shivered a little. Only because of the evening cold, of course. Not at the memory of those hollow, powdery screams....

“They let the other three run off,” Epps interjected. “And the volunteers saw just as much as we did.”

Mikaela bit at her lip. “I don’t think you, or they, saw all of it. The first aliens did a lot more to most of the other men there. The thing they did to you -- are you alright?” She looked him over, as if she could scan through bright purple parachute pants. 

“Yeah. A little sore.” Epps grimaced. "If I don't think about it, it never happened, right?" he said, giving a hollow laugh. "Do I want to know what they did to the others?"

"Not if you want to sleep at night," Mikaela said, her eyes getting glassy. She shivered again, then grabbed Epp's tattered bag to see what other treasures he'd found. Her eyes widened, and she plucked out a long strip of foil. Most of the little squares still felt squishy. “You found condoms?”

Epps grinned. “Can’t blame a guy for trying. Distract you from your misery, if we make it through this?” 

Mikaela took a closer look. "Expired," she said, not doing a very good job of hiding her disappointment. How she could even think about sex right now, after what she'd seen in the compound... and with the two monsters still looming overhead? She liked what the condoms represented, though -- at least Epps was laying odds that they’d survive to get to use them.

“Name something here that isn’t,” Epps began weakly. "They might possibly be okay."

"I don't take chances with 'might' and 'possibly'. Not even if we do make it through this alive," Mikaela snapped back, sounding way more pissed off than she meant to. Yeah right. Just like poor Raoul was sterile. Uh huh. 

It made her think about the fact that the aliens had collected his and some of the others' sperm... and the fact that none of their intelligence ever showed any women in transit to that final training and sorting center. She did not like where those thoughts led. Especially when there was absolutely nothing she could do about it in their current situation. Fuck.

The base in Colorado was gonna think they were dead. Travelling was getting harder of late -- fewer abandoned vehicles to hotwire or siphon fuel from. They didn’t have anything to trade to an Enclave convoy in exchange for a hitch. Maybe they could stay in this part of the country for a while -- but they’d need a shortwave radio and a whole lotta fast talking in order to hook up with another cell. All of this, of course, presuming the aliens didn’t decide to dust them on a whim. Double fuck.

God damn, she was tired. 

And Epps had his own misery he was trying to forget.

"Hey," he said, touching her arm as though slightly afraid his hand would get chewed off. "You okay?"

"No," Mikaela said, glancing up again. "This is all so fucked up." What was going to happen to all those guys? What had happened to her dad? And those two dweebs from her town who'd volunteered and had never been heard from again? What were their names again? Idiots. “Tell you what, Epps. We get through this, I’ll go to the commissary myself, steal or barter a whole box of damned condoms. Fresh ones.”

"Deal," he said, rising to gather up the heap of clothing and pile it on the cracked and grimy tiles near her. “There’s a zippo in the bag. Wanna try to get a fire started? Won’t give away our position any more than they will,” he said, nodding at the two towering mechs, still arguing it out overhead, like a modem in the next room shouting at a blender down the hallway. "We can get some sleep. I'll even let you use me as a god damn pillow." 

Mikaela pulled the cracked lighter out of the bag. There were only a few drops of fuel inside, but it sparked and emitted a brief glimmer of flame. Might work -- baby Jesus knew a fire would be nice. Georgia’s sultry summers had quickly rotted most of the already-scanty burnables in the store, unless they wanted to burn squashed plastic cartridges of do-it-yourself hair dye. At least the abundant cellophane plastic from their meal would do for tinder. “Sure,” she said, “gonna need some larger pieces of wood, though. Don’t go far.”

Epps nodded. “I won’t.” 

 

\-----

 

"Fuck," Mikaela cursed a few minutes later, throwing the lighter into the dirt. Looked like a fire was not in the cards, after all. Epps was off in the bushes, supposedly doing the manly wood-gathering thing, but likely taking care of some business. He'd apparently not had enough of the weird-ass spongy cube food to have the same effect as the other guys, to judge by the whole roll of toilet paper he’d taken with him, tucked under one arm. Real TP -- yet another precious and rare commodity, saved from decomposition by the miracle of plastic. Thankfully she'd found plenty of other tinder, so she didn’t have to use the precious stuff to start the fire... which wasn't going to start. 

"Human, what can you possibly be attempting to accomplish?" the smaller alien suddenly interrupted, making her jerk. The thing’s red eyes seemed to bore straight into her, like the evil eyes that lurked behind the hero in the dark corners of children’s books, so threatening that they couldn’t possibly be real. Except these were. 

"I was going to start a fire," Mikaela said, looking up nervously. She cupped her palm over her knee, ready to compensate for the joint if she had to move fast. "Gonna be cold tonight," she added for no particular reason. Like it cared. 

"And you thought a brief exothermic reaction that could, at best, result in the conflagration of this pitiable structure would remedy matters?" it asked, as though this was the most pathetically stupid idea it had ever come across in the entire universe. 

"Yes, actually. It's easier to fall asleep if you're warm." Was she really having this conversation with an alien robot? On the other hand, that gave her an idea. One that she might regret, considering what that thug-tank’s weapons had done. "Don't suppose you could start it for me?"

The thing glared at her, for what felt like forever. Then the larger one said something in its slightly softer, less-shrill chaos of electronic noises. 

The smaller robot’s glare shifted to its companion, and for a brief moment Mikaela could have sworn she saw something like 'oh puh-lease' in its expression as it screeched some sort of response. 

"Stand aside, human," the smaller one then ordered sharply. Mikaela pulled herself to her feet with difficulty, and limped to the side. 

"Nothing too big," she warned. "We just need something small that we can feed more wood into."

The thing again shot her a look as though her dearth of intelligence positively pained it, and then one of its fingers shifted into some sort of tube, and it shot a single bright blue spark of energy at the teepee of plastic, pine needles, and cardboard she'd made, igniting it. 

"Epps, you better hurry with that wood!" she called into the brush, hobbling back over and carefully lowering herself to the ground so she could feed bits of plastic and cardboard to the small fire. The fumes were going to be horrible, but at least it would keep the campfire going. The smaller alien was already turning back toward its companion. "Hey, domo arigato, Mister Roboto," she called to it. 

It whipped its head back her direction, as though it wanted to shoot laser beams out of its creepy eyes at her. “My designation,” the robot hissed, “is not Mister Roboto.”

“Fine then, Killr-”

“Nor Killroy!”

Mikaela paused, looked up. “Yeah?” The alien was already turning away, intent on its larger partner. “So what do I call you?”

The scarlet eyes spiraled down into pinpoints, in what Mikaela was pretty sure was annoyance. “My *name*, human, is --” The alien made an absurdly complicated sound, an inhuman layering of what sounded like radio static and a rising, multitonal screech.

“Yeah … so not going to be able to say that anytime soon,” she told it. “You have an English translation of that? Or should I just make something up?”

The alien stiffened even further, if that was possible. Those folded wings on its back swivelled outwards slightly in an obvious threat display, alien weaponry glinting in the firelight. The bigger one clicked in the darkness, making some kind of observation; those smoldering eyes turned to glare at it, before focussing down on her once more. 

“Your language is pitifully inadequate, human. Any translation would be an approximation only. You may call me ‘White Star’s Glorious Scream in Death and Nuclear Resurrection’, however.”

“Wow. Your parents really didn’t like you, did they?” On some level, Mikaela still couldn’t believe she was lipping off to an alien. But after a day like she’d had, sometimes you just had to snark. “But hey, I can work with that. Starscream it is.”

“My name is NOT--” the alien snarled, taking a step forward, those barbed talons curling. Only to be brought up short by the bigger one’s hand on its shoulder-guard-wing-armor thing. It rounded on the bigger one, spitting out a crackle of irate-sounding sounds. The larger one clicked again, oddly-soothing metallic ‘tocks’ in different patterns. After a moment, the smaller one abruptly deflated. “Fine,” it said huffily. 

“So...” Mikaela stretched her leg out beside the smokey little fire, wincing as the joint just refused to move at first. “Does that one have a name?”

“*His* name is far too lofty to be uttered by an organic’s foulsome lip plat--”

“Skyfire.” The huge one bent down, each of its main eyes the size of her entire head. The second, smaller pair of eyes were somewhat greenish, and set wide in its strange, blocky face. Its voice was deeper, a rumbling baritone. “You may call me Skyfire.” 

The smaller alien, Starscream, shifted and practically stamped a foot in irritation. It was a great deal more active than the larger one, like a dancer on meth, high-strung -- an arabian yearling next to a clydesdale. Not that most people knew what either of those were, these days. “If you are sufficiently fuelled and rested to bleat your questions, organic, then you can answer them as well,” the alien said, its voice grating, cruel-sounding. “What were you doing at Iacon’s processing facility?” 

For a moment, Mikaela considered lying--but somehow she didn’t think ‘I took a wrong turn in Albuquerque’ was going to cut it, and she was too damn tired to figure out anything more plausible. Plus, it was pretty obvious that she’d been snooping around where she wasn’t wanted. These aliens, however, seemed to have some kind of rivalry with the ones who ran the ‘processing facility’. Maybe she could use that.

“Trying to figure out exactly what they were ‘processing’,” she said, shrugging tiredly. “And why no one ever comes back. Guess I found out, huh?” She gave a brief, humorless chuckle. 

“Such facilities--do not the humans volunteer to go into them?” the bigger alien--Skyfire--asked. “I do not understand what has happened. On our last survey, Earth was a thriving organic world, and the humans had a budding proto-civilization. It was nothing like this. Did the Towers do this? Did they disrupt your planet’s ecosystems, so that they might enslave your people?” Mikaela had to admit, watching something that size bristle indignantly was rather impressive. And more than a little terrifying, to be honest.

"I'm not sure what towers you're talking about, but... I think we did a pretty damn good job of doing most of this ourselves, unless there was something going on I wasn’t aware of. Your kind didn't show up until things were already pretty fucked up," she began, feeding more of the pine needles into the smouldering fire to counteract some of the stench of the plastic. The aliens’ timing, Mikaela had to admit, was one hell of a coincidence. Maybe they did have something to do with the collapse... but she didn’t have any proof that they did. Mikaela craned her neck a bit to see if she could spot Epps in the darkness, then glanced up again at the large alien who was staring at her intently, waiting for her to continue. She might as well, Mikaela figured. Wasn’t like they couldn’t get this information from any enclave, or anybody old enough to have lived through it all. 

"Umm. So yeah. At least in this part of the world it started with things going to hell with the economy -- some kind of a bubble, or something. Around the same time, we had a huge drought; we’re still in one, kinda. Most scientists agreed that it was our own doing -- too many greenhouse gasses and fossil fuels and all that shit making the earth get warmer. The ice caps started melting fast, sea levels went up, a lot of the big fish stocks vanished, weather changed pretty much everywhere, and not for the better. Stuff like that." 

"Then one year, everything just went to hell with our food supply. Part of central California, the most productive agricultural region in this area of the world, just collapsed into a giant sinkhole. Something about the water table getting completely depleted -- ended up causing a lot of earthquakes, too. Between that and the drought, crops were failing everywhere.

“That’s when the genejump happened. We’d inserted a pesticide gene into soybean leaves, but then the gene started showing up in other things too, like corn pollen. Which blows everywhere, gets into everything. Only took about two years to kill off pollinators, like the bees, bats, even a lot of songbirds and the like. Didn’t kill off the mosquitoes, though.” Mikaela snorted. Malaria and yellow fever had both showed up in the ‘States about that time. They’d managed to keep the spread under control for a while--until most of the government collapsed, and the CDC with it. They didn’t call yellow fever ‘breakbone fever’ for nothing, she’d found. “With most of that year's harvest lost to the drought, there just wasn't enough food, and things... well. Things got rough, around the time I would’ve graduated from high school. Your kind showed up several years after that."

“You left out the wars,” said Epps, stepping into light of the aliens’ headlamps. He’d found more than just wood -- nice thick pieces of plank that looked like they’d been splintered from the frame of a dilapidated building. He also had a hatchet balanced atop the armload of wood, and a long kitchen knife in his belt. A cleaver wasn’t an ideal weapon, but it was certainly a good find in a place as picked-over as this. Epps always managed to scavenge the best stuff -- it was like the man could see in the damned dark. “We were involved in... eight of them, I guess, in the years before the other robots arrived. Mostly smaller engagements in the middle east and South America -- the drug wars. But I think it was the battles in Taiwan that really broke the army’s back. Our soldiers were worn out, recruitment had been flat for years, and any money coming in was going to defense contractors and shiny new weapons. So, when the oil-producing nations decided to shut off the spigot... there was nothin’ in place to make up for the energy shortfall.”

“Didn’t have much of an economy by that point, either, to get people jobs outside of the army,” added Mikaela, as Epps dumped the wood beside her. She went for the axe first. Rusty, but in remarkably good shape, all things considered. “Four fifths of the country was out of work, probably. Maybe more. Had all these young guys coming back without legs or whatever, needing medical care, nothing for them to do. Transport for anything was crazy expensive. Not enough food. People were dying of starvation - not in some place like North Korea or Somalia, but right here in the USA. I think we’d have overcome any one of the problems -- but everything just seemed to happen together.” She shrugged, splintering off wood chips to feed to the fire, stacking the larger pieces around the flickering blaze to dry. “The rich parts of cities threw up walls and became the enclaves, mostly. I think we still have a central government, or someone who claims to be the central government -- don’t know for sure.” Didn’t much care, either.

Mikaela glanced up at the larger robot again. She couldn't really read its strange face, but she had a sense that it was horrified. The smaller one spat something out at it, and it rumbled something back, one set of its glowing eyes never leaving her. "And how did Iacon come to occupy this continent?” the bigger alien -- Skyfire -- asked. “And when did they start exporting humans from here to other parts of the empire?" 

“And more to the point -- why bother?” added Starscream, crossly. “Local waxes are admittedly of some interest, but drones could tend those plantations. We’ve seen the centers where your kindred are taught basic maintenance skills, but keeping organics off world is no small matter. Why employ a human to perform a drone’s function?”

"I don't know. Do you robots regularly rape and torture drones?" Mikaela shot back, suddenly furious. Epps put a calming hand on her arm, and she shook it off. She couldn't get the screams out of her head. "Because that's what they were doing in that processing facility, or whatever the hell you called it."

Starscream bristled at her comment, his side wings flaring out, the glow of his red eyes narrowing to pinpricks. “Whatever they are doing, you can be certain it is not ‘rape,’” the robot sneered. “You have no sparks, no firewalls to breach, hardly any processors and nothing worth hacking."

“You fucking piece of -- wadded up tin can!” Fisting the handle of the hatchet, Mikaela used it to lever herself to her feet. “You talking pile of rusted bolts! Let’s see how much you think it’s rape when I cram this axe up your ass!”

The robot looked more confused than threatened or insulted. “They were penetrating -- human, you must have mistaken a medical procedure for something it wasn’t. No mech would care to touch an -- one of your species in such a manner.” 

“You fucking--!”

"Easy," Epps materialized, catching the axe behind the head, wrapping an arm around her waist before she could lurch into a charge. 

“They were fucking collecting semen as well -- tell me how that’s not sexual, huh? Made a bunch of those men come into tubes, then put those things in them and injected them, marked them --” Mikaela squirmed, kicked with her good leg, but Epps was stronger and knew her well enough to avoid her better blows. Part of her was aware that she was ranting, most of her just didn’t care. “--just labeled them like meat. You’re telling me that wasn’t fucking rape?!” 

Before Mikaela could get her elbow far enough around to really whack Epps in the head, Skyfire approached, tocking and clicking at Starscream. The thing knelt, as if in an attempt to bring its massive bulk more to Mikaela and Epp's level. Hunched down, the robot was still the size of a rather large two-story house.

It was somehow even more terrifying than him standing.

"Whatever is happening in those facilities, and on this planet, is an affront to the honor of any sparked being," Skyfire said, his voice quiet and sad. "I am certain that when the Lord High Protector and Prime are informed of what is truly taking place, they will intervene. Please do not judge my companion too harshly -- we have travelled far, and are still struggling to understand your world and what has happened here. Please, seat yourselves, and let us determine how best to move forward, all of us. For the good of your species, and your planet."

Kinda hard to argue with something like that. And while Mikaela was pissed enough to lay odds on herself and her axe against the fighter jet robot -- at least she could do some amount of denting -- she’d almost certainly need something larger to take on this one. Unhappily, she let Epps take the axe, and help her limp back to the crackling fire. 

Starscream, unsurprisingly, was screeching away in some kind of protest to Skyfire’s little speech -- or at least, it sounded like a protest. Though for all she knew he could be commenting on the weather or telling the bigger alien he had a nice ass... or whatever the robot equivalent was. Except for that one, all-too-recognizable sequence of sounds that Starscream seemed so fond of saying.

"He disagrees?" Epps asked as he spread out some of the scavenged clothing and helped Mikaela down, directing his question to Skyfire.

"Starscream... has less faith in the honor of our ruling dyad, and our kind in general, than I do," Skyfire said carefully. 

"That isn't all he said," Mikaela cut in, suspiciously. The idea that maybe, just maybe these aliens were going to try to help... it was too good to be true. It had to be. "I thought I told you not to call us _::fragging organics::_." 

"What I said, human, was that you fragging organics have already done quite well at destroying yourselves. Why bother trying to assist you? With or without the intervention of our so-honorable and esteemed leaders, your kind will likely go extinct in less than a vorn, as most of the other species on this mudball already have." 

Mikaela snarled. “That’s *our* mudball, not yours. And they’re our lives, not yours to play with, like fucking metal toasters playing gods. And I’m Mikaela, not ‘human’ -- you want me to call you anything other than ‘pile of rust,’ you’d better fucking learn my name.”

Epps arched a brow, but shrugged. “I’m Epps,” he added. “And if you really wanna help -- we need to find out more about what’s goin’ on in there, too. The enclaves hoard the technology they get for selling people to your kind, and we’re still not sure what most of that stuff even is. Or what its really worth, or how to use it.” 

“Sell?” Skyfire asked, and even the screechy jetfighter fell silent. The two robots exchanged looks. “Indentured servitude is legal, in some situations, when it is adequately compensated. But slavery is not.”

The corner of Epps’ mouth moved up, that telltale little smirk usually reserved for the moment he drew a bead on a particularly hapless transport convoy through the scope of his favorite rifle. “Then maybe you can help us find out if that stuff is, in fact, adequate compensation.”

Mikaela blinked at him. “You gotta be out of your freakin’ mind,” she whispered, while the aliens broke into more chitter-yowling. The resistance had always plucked at the edges of the enclaves and their exploitation, stealing a crate here, a shipment there. The enclaves had almost all the power, all the resources. And yet... when you got right down to it, there wasn’t an enclave in the ‘States that could stop one of the aliens from taking what it wanted. 

“Maybe,” Epps agreed, but there was something dark and satisfied in his eyes. It was, Mikaela realized, the expression of a soldier who finally saw a chance to strike. “But those are some damn big guns. Seems a shame not to put them to use.”


	2. Chapter 2

 

“Oh God,” said Mikaela, pushing aside the crumpled paper padding. “Is it...”

Epps let out a breath, and the corner of his mouth curved up. “Yeah. Looks like there might be two of them.”

Wrapping her hands around it carefully, Mikaela lifted the device out of the crate in which it had been stored for shipment. The thing was about eighteen inches long and a foot wide, light for its size, cased in something that looked like bronze and inscribed with a few bold runes. It was radiantly warm to the touch. “Cold fusion.”

The way the generator radiated heat was strange -- it was never too hot to handle but would keep a house nicely warm without danger of fire, even in winter. That use, however, would have been an incredible waste. Because if you wrapped simple copper wire around it and hooked up a battery, the thing would output enough low-voltage electricity to power several thousand lightbulbs. The power was constant, never faded. It would burn for a century, at least. Every enclave had at least one, usually more -- you couldn’t run refrigerators or air conditioning off the current, but solar panels provided the voltage for that. 

“Looks like these three might be self-assembling pumps, as well,” said Epps. He’d laid his prybar aside and crawled back into the bed of the enclave truck, doing a quick visual inventory on its contents. The water pumps came with solar panels attached; they drilled their own boreholes and always found water in a matter of minutes. In direct sunlight, they’d produce several hundred gallons an hour, even in the desert. The water wasn’t always clean, of course, but it was a damn sight better than hauling buckets up from a stream for irrigation.

A talon hooked onto the edge of Mikaela’s crate, tipping it to peer inside. 

Mikaela jerked, swatted at the arm-thick claws. “Hey! Careful with that!”

The jet-alien, Starscream, eyed Mikaela balefully. “These devices. They are playthings for your soft-headed larvae?”

“Fuck no, get your claws off!” Mikaela pushed at the mech’s talons. “You know how many ‘volunteers’ probably got sold off to those assholes to pay for these?”

“How many?” Starscream stooped lower, regarding her intensely with all four eyes, the smallest still the size of her fist. 

“What?” Mikaela stood her ground, squinted back. She definitely wasn’t leaving a pair of cold fusion pods to this thing’s grasp. “I don’t know. Maybe a dozen, so if you think I’m letting you fly off with--”

“Probably more,” said Epps, climbing up to the top of the truck to scan both directions down the broken, winding road. He kept a low profile -- the enclave escorts might have fled, but that didn’t mean they were gone for good. And the fitfully-sparking alien, crumpled on the road where Starscream had shot it... well. Epps knew perfectly well how hard the aliens were to kill. That truck-thing wasn’t dead, and he didn’t quite trust that it wouldn’t stand up and start shooting. “We’ve got two cargo trucks from each of two enclaves, here. Fortaleza and Rio Verde.”

“Huh. Well, Fortaleza’s a major wax-production hub,” said Mikaela, frowning. Rio Verde could be one of any number of small townships down here. Twelve tons per car -- might be forty-eight tons of wax, or up to maybe eighty people.”

“Or some combination thereof,” Epps nodded, scanning the horizon. “Looks like the enclaves struck a good bargain; those last two trucks have a set of hurricane shields, unless I miss my guess.” Hurricanes in this part of the world were no laughing matter -- they destroyed crops, ruined houses and boats, killed thousands. Once the alien shield devices sat in the sun and charged for a week, they’d form a protective bubble over an entire enclave and its fields. Gale-force winds could rage outside, while a gentle breeze stirred the air inside. Helped make sure the enclaves had both food and seed after bad weather -- both of which they sold to the camps around them at exorbitant rates. 

“A moment, Starscream,” murmured the bigger robot, crouching down to examine the crates for itself. “Do you mean to say that these items were traded... for fifty thousand kilograms of carnauba? Or up to eighty humans trained in detailing?”

Mikaela frowned. She didn’t know about the conversion math, exactly, but that sounded about right. “Exactly what I said. You don’t act like that’s such a great deal. What gives?”

The two enormous aliens exchanged glances.

“We require,” said Starscream slowly, “more data. You spoke of this ‘Fortaleza?’”

\----

Over the next two weeks, they worked their way south.

After a successful raid and subsequent distribution of supplies, the two robots had taken them somewhere high up in the Andes, to decide how they were going to proceed. Brazil was one of the main wax exporting areas, with many plantations that the aliens were interested in looking into. And as night was coming on fast, the ‘inferior organics had to refuel and recharge’.

Oh, how she hated that arrogant piece of scrap metal. It was even worse when he was *right*.

“Cold,” Mikaela murmured, nosing closer to Epps’s warm skin. It might be summer in the southern hemisphere, but it was fucking freezing up this high.

The convoy had been primarily human-run, though there had been one nasty-looking mech present, bristling with weapons. Starscream had... well, ‘dismantled’ seemed a nice way to put it. Now Skyfire and Starscream were having some kind of post-raid argument -- what went for discussion with a piece of work like Starscream. 

Their bedrolls -- it felt good to have a proper kit and the aliens didn’t seem to mind carrying things around inside them, so she should have picked up more blankets -- were spread on a low rise, partially cloaked by scrubby-looking trees. The aliens paced below, the lights on their bodies moving like stars in the night, their beeping and squealing a background noise starting to become as familiar to her as crickets. Crazy how you could get used to something like this so quickly.

“Got a way to warm you up,” Epps purred, his arms tightening around her. She could feel him smile. 

She'd been tempted after the exhilaration of escaping the mech facility. It was good just to be alive, and who knew how long they were going to stay that way, given their current company. Just seeing what Starscream had done to those other robots...

“Hands n’ mouth only, and you’re doing all the heavy lifting,” she agreed, her cold fingertips stroking down the hot, rippled skin of his abs. One thing she could say for a post-apocalyptic world: a good workout was pretty much a mandatory, daily thing. 

“Think I can do you one better than that... if you’d like,” Epps rumbled, reaching over her to fish through one of the plastic sacks of items they’d ‘rescued’ from the convoy. Most of the rest of it had gone to the towns in the area -- little places that the enclave shipments never got near, where you had to walk for days if you wanted medicine. There weren’t many such towns; even up this high, the malaria somehow found a way to survive. She sort of wished she’d been able to keep one of the cold fusion pods... maybe the memory of the sheer joy on all those faces would keep her warm. 

They’d kept some of the non-tech supplies, though -- she and Epps’d shared a full pot of mac’n’cheese earlier, with spam, a can of tuna, and several real tomatoes all mixed in. That was luxury, no matter who you were. And Epps had apparently also managed to snag... “Condoms? And they're not expired! Jesus, Epps, why didn’t you tell me earlier?” 

“Well, I -- oomph! Your leg!” 

“It’s better,” Mikaela told him firmly, snatching one of the squares from Epps and shoving him over onto his back. Not quite the truth, but the bruise was nearly gone, and she walked without a limp most of the time. Mornings were still bad, but it wasn’t morning, was it? 

“Didn’t look better, when we were running from those guards,” he protested, tugging at the button of her jeans as she straddled him. His hands felt cool on her bruise, now just a faded greenish discoloration instead of a livid purple, though it still pretty much went from knee to ribcage. The air was far colder, and she hunched, trying to keep the impromptu tent of blankets from sliding over her back and to get in Epps’s pants at the same time. “Here, let me--”

Mikaela silenced him with a mac’n’cheese-flavored kiss. “It’s better,” she told him quietly, working at his belt, and kissed him again. Even his mouth was hot, salty-sweet, and she let herself enjoy the slick wet sensation of it all, the glide of tongue across tongue. Weren’t many opportunities for something like this, not anymore. 

His pants finally came undone, and she curled her fingers around his thick cock, already at attention. Damn nice hardware -- she only wished it were still light enough to see... but she could still taste, huddled down under the blankets, Epps’s fingers working at the worn hooks of her bra. 

She loved the sounds he made with her mouth on him, the silk of him under each long swipe of her tongue, and the steely flex of his hips. His calloused fingers were just rough enough on her nipples, squeezing, stroking. Epps drew a shuddering breath. “Mik -- yeah, just like that. Ah! No -- want this to last, don’t--”

She grinned at him in the dark, lips wet, and tore open one of the little foil packets. Standard condoms could be a little tight on him, and it wasn’t like she had a choice of brands, so she rolled it onto him with care... and with her mouth. 

Oh yeah, there was that high-pitched gasp of his, all right. His fingers tangled in her cropped hair, just cupping, not gripping or worse, trying to take charge. There was nothing she hated more than a guy thinking that, just ‘cause she went down on him, he had the rights to call all the shots. Epps knew her pretty well by now. 

She knew him too, knew just when to pull back, rolling the rest of the condom down his length with her fingertips, drawing a disappointed groan from him. Epps’s hands went to her butt as she crawled up over him, helping her straddle his flanks when her strained hip tried to give out. “Yeah,” she purred, letting Epps help with balance as she curled her fingers around the base of his cock, holding it steady. And then, a little at a time, Mikaela sank down on it, nice and slow, feeling it fill her up inside, getting used to the stretching ache. 

“Yeah, babe -- so nice like this,” Epps murmured to her, hands on her ass to help take some strain off her thighs. 

Mikaela gasped, letting her head fall back, kneading his chest like a cat, going by feel alone. Epps was built -- his buff torso was pretty enough during daylight, but tracing it in complete darkness was even more erotic. “Better than nice,” she growled, between gritted teeth, as he arched up into her, rocking himself inside. 

“Yeah, better than nice.” Holding her hips steady, Epps curled up to kiss and nip her shoulder, the curve of her neck. The air was cold on her, but his breath and skin where she straddled his lap heated her through like a furnace. “So much better than nice. Sublime, bewitching, splendid--” he breathed the words into her ear, punctuating each with a caress and a subtle little thrust, always just amazingly strong even under her weight. “--angelic, r-resplendant, mag-fucking-nificent--” 

“Ah!” Laughter and orgasm washed over her at the same time, like being filled with effervescence. She clenched down around him, trying to draw it out. God, it had been so damn long. “Fuck, oh yes -- harder, I want--” Gasping, she tried to push herself off him, flinching when her leg ached more than she liked. She grimaced, unseen in the dark. This wasn’t going to work like this. 

As she sank down again, his hands smoothing carefully over her hips and flanks, she kissed him. Hard and deep, just like she wanted to fuck herself on his cock, but couldn’t.

“You know,” he purred against her lips, “I did agree to do the heavy lifting.”

Oh. *Oh.* She growled and kissed him hungrily, and let him roll them over -- along her uninjured side -- until she was on her back and he was, miraculously, still inside her. Her hands immediately went to that wonderful ass of his. Fuck, yes. 

She groaned at the new angle. Oh yeah, so good like this, and even more full -- she let her thighs wing open, ignoring the ache as he pushed in, seating himself deep, starting a slow, rolling rhythm. Hips rocking, he slid out, an almost painful loss, and she dug chipped nails into his flanks, that perfect ass, trying to urge him deeper. 

Mikaela gasped into the darkness, head thrown back... and four glowing red eyes peered over Epps’ shoulder.

She couldn’t help the sudden sharp scream that seemed to lunge from her throat.

“Arrrgh! Fuckin -- you were supposed to be the fuck over there! What the fuck!”

“Human,” hissed Starscream, even as she scrambled for a blanket, and Epps jerked away -- oh fuck that hurt -- and went for his weapon. “Do that again.”

Shit. What a crappy finale. Mikaela banged her head back against the rocky ground, livid. There were no blue lights around, which didn’t make her feel much safer, but at least Skyfire hadn’t joined his robot buddy in playing peeping tom. With how fucking dark it was, she couldn't see much but for those fucking glowing red eyeball lights -- Epps was just a darker shadow, though he was scrambling to his feet only an arm’s length away. 

She was going to kill the alien. Butt-naked. She was going to freakin’ kill it. 

“The fuck I’m gonna!” Epps ranted, and the four optics moved as if the flyer was cocking its head. “Get your jollies somewhere else, you voyeuristic spawn of a junkyard heap!”

“You would do well to curb your tongue,” the robot grated out in its hoarse voice, and Mikaela heard something whine a high electric pitch that she associated with charged capacitors... as if Starscream winding up to shoot someone with that... EMP gun, or whatever else it was that made robots collapse as if they had just been switched off. “And I am not talking to you, degenerate primate. You, female, do that again.”

Mikaela snorted and wrapped the blanket around her chilled skin -- just another discomfort for which she could thank the alien -- and her hand fell on something that felt like Epps’s pants. She shoved the wadded fabric in his general direction. The robot could go fuck itself for all she cared, but she wasn’t going to let Epps remain starkers any longer. Not when there were robots watching, and she could practically feel the memories of the facility creeping up beneath Epps’s outrage. This wasn’t gonna do any favors for his mental health. Or hers.

On the other hand, Mikaela figured, she was already pretty crazy. 

She glared up at the flyer, knowing it could see her despite the dark. “You think I’m gonna put out for you just ‘cause you tell me to?” She wanted to laugh hysterically, because her usual dynamics with Epps were suddenly turned on their head -- he was the one losing his shit and cursing like a sailor in the background, and she the one clinging to a semblance of calm.

Oh yeah, she could be calm. Very calm.

So calm that she found it hilarious when two of those four eyes winked off and on, a sure sign that some part of human slang confused the robot. 

Its head sank lower, eyes practically hovering over them, close enough to spit at. Or to huck a rock at. Mikaela didn’t know if it was deliberate or not, but Starscream’s voice was exactly the right pitch for that scene in every old spy movie, where the Big Bad Evil Guy whispered into the Hero’s ears just what the Hero had done wrong - starting with being born. “If producing those electromagnetic fields requires you to ‘put out’, as you termed it, fleshling, you will do exactly that.”

Mikaela snarled and climbed to her feet, clenching her arms in front of her chest to hold the blanket up. This wasn’t the kind of conversation you had sitting down. “The fuck. I don’t know what the hell you thought you saw, but if you’re gonna start hallucinating, you do that on your own time, you rust bucket!”

Starscream screeched. “I am a Seeker, fleshling! I can detect one of your foolish ‘campfires’ from orbit, a single functioning circuit beneath the rubble of your pitiable excuses for buildings! My electromagnetic sensor suite is among the finest in the empire! I did not ‘start hallucinating’!” 

Vain, at all? Thankfully, Epps had gotten his pants on and his shit under control, from the sound of it, and was back in the game. She heard him step up beside her. “Alright, God. What *exactly* is it that you found so... fascinating that you had to interrupt us like that? I thought we explained to you what privacy meant!”

“You want privacy, and yet you couple out under the open skies?” The mech did that strange click-hiccup that passed for a laugh with the creep. “You should complain to whoever gave you your optical processors. Your infrared sensing capabilities are clearly substandard. And that electromagnetic discharge you emitted during overload was hardly discreet.”

“We don’t have -- wait, what electromagnetic discharge?”

All four optics focused on Mikaela, and they were so close that she could see the spiral zooming of the camera lens structures inside. “You did not deliberately imitate the frequencies of a mech in the throes of pleasure?”

Mikaela snarled up at it. “I’m human. We don’t do any weird electronic shit to get off. Where the fuck would I get the batteries for that kind of thing, anyway? And *why* the fuck would I want to copy one of you nosey, peeping, goddamn tin cans?”

The eyes blinked again, and then retreated. “Innate biology then,” the flyer mused. “If you can be trained to produce those fields at will, and if the intensity can be increased, then it is obvious just why there is so much interest in humans.”

“What?” Mikaela demanded.

“Wait, people are being abducted... because we’re able to do something that reminds you of your own kind? Other robots?” said Epps, struggling to make sense of this -- no simple matter, given the situation. He hadn’t even gotten to come, poor guy. 

And the fucking alien had made them waste a condom, god dammit!

The tall jet issued several hiccuping clicks, ending with a rude-sounding brawp. “You overestimate your importance. The female would, rather, be used as a penetrative interface toy -- a valuable item in trade.” 

“What the fuck!”

“Interface?”

Starscream gave a quite human-sounding snort. And -- was that disgust in his evil-overlord voice? “Exchange of data and electromagnetic fields with the explicit purpose of generating pleasure and overload.”

Mikaela was too stunned to speak. This was -- they were using humans as glorified *fleshlights*? 

Epps’ hand closed on her shoulder, clenched so hard that it hurt. His entire body was shaking -- anger, she supposed, hoped -- but his voice held only a slight tremor. “And the mystery of the ass-rape is lifted. Before the... selection, I heard some of the guys talking. Said that the robots like a little oral, especially on some kind of cable tip.”

Starsceam gave what felt like a cold, uncompromising look. "Your hypothesis is likely correct. Towers mecha are deviant enough to devise such... interfacing practices. I would prefer, however, to conduct some experiments to gather first-hand evidence.”

“Wait, wait, *what*?” 

“Evidence, organic. Datapoints, facts, response curves. Surely the marginally-networked grubs that serve as your processors can understand that.”

“Grubs, what --?” Mikaela started, and never even saw the talons that closed around her ribcage, the alien plucking her up off the ground like a doll.

“Starscream!” The world was tumbling over, moving too damn fast, Epps shouting, everything shaking, metal against her and blanket just gone, the vertigo of being moved too suddenly. Mikaela could hardly draw a proper breath.

“Let me down, you tin-can asshole, piece of scrap wadded up transistor--!” she wheezed, pounding at the fingers clenching around her ribcage. Her breasts were being smashed uncomfortably against her chest, her legs hung out beneath without any support, and her naked skin stuck to the metal. Mikaela didn’t care a whit. There was panic rising in her throat, and how in the world could they have been so stupid to trust those walking scrap heaps? The pair of aliens were exactly like those others, just a bit more polite and a lot more devious about getting whatever perverted thing they wanted. She tried kicking the jet, but he held her too far away to reach anything.

“You will let me go right *now*, or I’ll drool on you!” 

Another vertigo-inducing lift to Epps’ shouts and increasingly dire threats -- he had heard her drool and raised her a piss and a vomit -- and suddenly those glowing red eyes were huge and up close and less than a meter away from her.

“Cease your wailing, flesh-bag,” Starscream hissed, “I am not going to disassemble you.”

Although she was right up close to his face, his voice didn’t sound like it came from the jet’s masked mouth-area. Rather, the sound seemed to emanate from further down below, the cockpit maybe.

She glared right into his eyes, even as she continued trying to pry his fingers off her. “I’m not going to be a sex-toy experiment, either, you, you -- goddamn alien toaster!”

The eyes tilted, as if the alien cocked its head. “Order your mate to refrain from ejecting its excrement into my armor seams.”

Mikaela spluttered. “One, Epps is not my mate, and two, he can eject anywhere he fucking well likes, if you don’t put me down!”

There was a loud bang, and Mikaela nearly got whiplash from Starscream’s flinch that shook her around like a doll. Then she was almost deafened as Starscream screeched at a volume they could probably hear echoing on the moon. “You insolent, mud-crusted little slime-bag of a protein-processor, how *dare* you shoot me!”

“Next time, I’ll aim higher.”

Oh, bless Epps and his gun. Even if his lines were atrocious.

“What is going on here?” The sound of machinery rising came from the darkness, a hydraulic and electric whine, and the sense of something huge moving. “Starscream.” 

Mikaela had never been so glad to see four points of glowing blue light in her life. The dots approached rapidly, the ground trembling beneath the other alien’s steps, and there was more bleeping and squeeing. Skyfire flicked on a diffuse floodlamp, supplying a glow that illuminated the jet’s spiked hand and angular face. And Mikaela’s butt-naked body.

Starscream paid the struggling organic in his hands only enough attention to ensure that he neither dropped nor squished it. “I have everything under control!”

A pair of Skyfire’s glowing blue eyes went to Epps’s gun. “The humans are very distressed, to judge by their pheromones,” he rumbled. “They have not been this bad since the export facility.”

“No shit we’re distre--”

“And you think that is *my* fault?”

“Fucking duh!”

The aliens broke off into more of their electronic shrieking, a cacophony of noise that made Mikaela’s head pound. She focused on working an arm free, something -- anything! -- to try to clap over her ears. 

She felt it when the jet-alien slumped a little, and she tensed, ready to flail or spit or whatever the fuck it took. The mechs exchanged a few more sharp words. And then Starscream... knelt, reached out, and placed her carefully in the center of her tangled mess of blankets. Mikaela sucked in a gasping breath and stumbled over fabric and stones alike as she went for her own pilfered rifle, skin pebbling up in goosebumps. 

The jet vented a gust of warm air. And then it did something that Mikaela would never, never have anticipated, not in a million years. 

It apologized. 

Kind of.

“My earlier denial was incorrect, human. The energy patterns your overload released are highly compatible with our own overload signature. I would have preferred to test whether contact with a plug current from a mech enhanced your signal strength to a usable interface current. However, as Skyfire has so kindly reminded me, circumstantial evidence already supports that theory on a 90 percent significance level, and it would be... unethical to perform further experiments that would raise the significance level only marginally.”

The tension did not leave from Mikaela’s muscles. She was too jittery to follow the alien’s convoluted sentences. “In English,” she demanded impatiently.

The jet made a sound that was almost a scoff, but more... uncomfortable? “It appears the event you witnessed was rape. Your mate and others of your kind were, indeed, forced to interface without consent." Those glowing eyes spiraled narrow. “And this, in exchange for a pittance in primitive technology.”

Mikaela gaped. She was already shivering badly, now that she was away from the heated metal palm. She doubted she’d be able to get off a steady shot like this -- which made it all the more impressive that Epps hadn’t hit her. 

Skyfire nodded solemnly. “I regret this misunderstanding, as does Starscream. We have much to discuss between ourselves, and you both likely wish to recharge. But in the morning we wish to confer with you, to determine our best course of action in combating this monumental injustice.” 

\---

Epps turned towards her once the two robots were gone -- or at least, retreated far enough that their hulking shapes merged into the darkness, their glowing eyes either turned away or closed. She could hear the fear that was still deep in his bones, no matter how he tried to mask it with humor.

“So. You were going to *drool* on it?” 

“Oh, shut it.”

Hopefully, tomorrow was going to be better.

 

\----

\----

 

“Oh fuck, it worked.” Robert’s eyes were like saucers as he looked up, the phone held in a white-knuckled grip.

Astoria, administrix of Boston-seven, smiled pleasantly at the ambassadors. Bastards. “Excuse me, Gentlemen. I am needed elsewhere.” She stood, gesturing Robert out sharply. No more unfavorable trade agreements, no more squabbling over who had donated exactly what guttertrash to the aliens. No more groveling before the might of Boston-one, the largest enclave in this shit hole, or whinging for favors and new wiring from Boston-two. No more screwing Boston four’s dickwad ambassador for a few extra bales of scrap and head of cattle. Fuck them; fuck them all.

“Now wait just a minute, Missy--” Boston-two, an avuncular piece of shit if any had ever crawled over the Enclave walls. 

Astoria smiled pleasantly. “I’ll be sure to have refreshments sent.” They could choke on them. “Perhaps you would care to review our latest textile production reports, while you wait? I’ll have Kandi bring them in as well.” Might as well put the girl to work -- bitch was paid to flirt and entertain, lord knew Astoria didn’t keep her around for her brain. 

Smiling pleasantly, Astoria ushered the secretary in, and stepped out of the office, drawing the door firmly closed on the cluster of ambassadors. Only then did she permit herself a fierce and toothy grin.

They could all go to hell. Astoria had herself a *mech.*

\----

The battlestation had been watching this robot for years. Regular as clockwork, it’d drop by the mechs’ training compound, just outside the city, every ten weeks. It hung out there for ten or eleven days, got itself all shined up. Probably by the pampered guttertrash inside -- they needed mechs to practice on, apparently, and the aliens often came and went from the place. But most of them flew or rolled off directly afterwards. 

This alien hung around for a day or two before heading south, swooping and diving, chasing the clouds, showing off, flaunting its sheer speed and agility. Astoria could barely field a handful of prop-jet planes and a few choppers, and this thing outclassed all of them. Astoria still remembered the Blue Angels, the precision flying jets Daddy had hired to overfly her tenth birthday party, and the goddamn alien put even them to shame. 

It also landed. Not every time, but often enough to catch her eye. Fucker had pushed farmers’ trucks out of the mud twice. It once rescued squatters from a collapsed apartment block, deep in the no-man’s districts. Like some kind of freaking alien Superman -- maybe it got off on playing hero while the gutter trash worshiped around its huge clockwork feet, Astoria didn’t know. 

But it had given her an idea.

And so she had staged another rescue mission for the asshole, and like the dumb robot it was, it fell for it. Got it to crawl into a rigged building, and then gave it an EMP pulse directly to the head. Forbidden tech, of course, but Astoria hadn’t watched her Daddy for so long for nothing. There were ways to find and encourage the right people to give her what she wanted. There were always ways. 

The streets were empty as her convoy approached -- the gutter trash knew better than to get in her way -- save for a cluster of men and children outside the abandoned multi-storey warehouse. The street urchins huddled together, some as young as two, though it was difficult to tell under all the dirt. 

Astoria swung down from the seat of the fuelless alien vehicle, a motorbike-like thing, elegantly sleek for all its oversized and heavy-slung bulk. She gave the side a subtle pat, and slung her helmet over one of the handlebars. “Why are these still here,” she snapped, jerking a thumb at the urchins, as her handful of guards and lackeys pulled up behind. 

One of the men regarded her. “You... want them running free?” he asked. Soft spoken and in plain, dark clothing, the operative could blend into any neighborhood, any streetgang. 

“They did their jobs, didn’t they?” Astoria said, already heading for the main doors. Soft, that was soft of her -- the brats might talk. But dead brats could be found by someone, too, and then there would be riots and attention drawn to this facility, just the same. She gestured to Robert, just getting off his motorbike. “Pay them.”

The enclave official hesitated, then dug a fistful of silver credits from a hidden pocket and poured them into an urchin’s outstretched hands. The children fled, the older ones dragging the littlest. 

Another specialist operative met Astoria just inside the remains of the huge rolling doors. The battered plates of them hadn’t been in good shape anyway, unmaintained all these years, but the alien had torn them practically apart in the process of climbing in to ‘rescue’ the street urchins from the apparent fire. Harmless smoke was still billowing out of the upper levels. “Status?” she demanded, voice low as she headed for the massive partition. She’d helped design this modification to the old warehouse -- the meters-thick concrete shielding, the sound amplifiers, even which windows the urchins were to stand at and where they were to run. 

“It’s still out,” said the man, following her closely. “But we’re starting to register electrical activity.”

She rounded the corner... and got her first good look at the alien. She’d seen plenty of others, usually in their vehicle-like modes. But none this close, unfolded into their fake-human bodies. They were even bigger than they’d seemed. This one was covered in slab plating that looked like the skin of a tank -- it seemed impossible that such a blocky-looking monster could fly at all, let alone so well. 

Not that it was going anywhere at all, anytime soon. And it definitely wouldn’t be showing up to demand truckloads of goods she didn’t have, in return for a paltry handful of the tech she needed. Astoria sneered. The entire creature was wrapped in chains bolted into the very skeleton of the building. Each cabled link was as thick as her torso, reinforced with corded nylon to withstand a hundred tons of pressure or more. 

Astoria had designed those, too.

She investigated it from all sides, making sure her people had done a good job. It was wrapped tighter than a mummy, with special care towards the turbines at its thighs. Should it fire them like this, they would produce a jetstream hot enough to weaken the metal, but she had thought of that eventuality, too. They had stuffed as many rocks and debris down the air intake as possible, so that the engine would suck in the stones first and hopefully damage itself. If worst came to worst, they had concrete ready to hand, and larger rocks as well.

“Not so high and mighty anymore, are you?” Astoria murmured, her smile a crooked one. Then, louder: “How we coming with the implants?”

“Ninety percent!” replied a spectacled man, not bothering to look up from his work. They’d hit the robot fast enough, and hard enough, that it hadn’t gotten a chance to smooth its plates of armor tightly down. That meant there were plenty of nice, big gaps through which to feed the carefully wired blocks of plastic explosives. 

She doubted they’d be enough to kill the creature -- some of the Bethesda resistance survivors swore that they’d seen one of the aliens take a cruise missile midair, and the thing apparently survived. An entire damn ship-mounted missile, twelve feet long with a five hundred pound warhead, couldn’t kill one of the aliens. But it had slowed the monster down.

Perhaps a few hundred pounds of explosives under its armor would make this one think twice, as well. It was the riskiest part of Astoria’s plan. Her advisors -- those few who even thought it possible to capture an alien -- wanted to disassemble it, find out how it worked, reverse-engineer what they could. But even the best technical minds available to Astoria came up with little when allowed to disassemble a piece of alien tech, like one of the fuelless motor bikes -- the technology was simply too different, too miniaturized. She had no reason to believe the eggheads would be more successful with one of the aliens themselves.

The thing’s thick slabs of plating were warm under her gloved hands.

A handful of lights flickered on the mountainous body, glowing under the chains. “Hurry it up,” Astoria demanded, clambering up the creature’s heavy chest. One of her nearby operatives tossed up a crowd-control shocklance, and she snatched it out of the air, then leveled the tip at the alien’s lumpish head. 

She felt when it woke up. Its four circular eye things lit, and the chains shivered. “Don’t move!” Astoria hissed, “and if you try to call for help, there won’t be enough of you left to rebuild a toaster.”

The alien blinked, two eyes at a time. Static crackled over a series of clicking noises. One of the busy techs cursed. “Wha--” started the alien. 

“Shut the fuck up and listen, alien,” she cut it off. “You will nod when you understand me, and--”

That metallic voice crackled. “...not ‘alien’. My designation is Powergl--”

“Did I tell you to talk?” Astoria demanded, thumbing the power switch on the shock prod. “Speak again, and I *will* provide you a demonstration. You don’t need both arms to be useful to me. Try anything, call for help, or get more than a kilometer from me, and every fucking one of those explosives under your skin is going to ignite. Understand? DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

The heavy plates under Astoria’s feet twitched a little. And then slowly, the alien nodded.

 


End file.
